Curse of the High IQ

by Aaron Clarey

For example if you’re average and wish to make friends and socialize you have a plethora of options available to you. You can go to a nightclub, you can go to the bars, you can “watch the game,” or join a fantasy football league. No doubt for some of you this sounds appetizing, but for the majority of high IQ people these are painful experiences as they lack the mental stimulation we need and thus, to us, are pointless.

Another example, night owls. People with high IQ’s tend not to be able to sleep well and do their best work at night. Unfortunately, the rest of the world doesn’t work that way and is on the traditional 9-5 schedule. This means you cannot avail yourself of the “economies to scale” and infrastructure that exists to serve the majority of the population during the day time.

And a cursory look at the state, federal, and local budgets show the majority of taxes (around 70%) is simply transferring money from smart people to dumber ones. You may not like the politically incorrect nature of this observation, but it doesn’t make it any less true.

The vast majority of people are neither interested in, nor want to achieve greatness. The vast majority of people do not want to lead different or unique lives. They are perfectly content utterly wasting their time on a mediocre life, with a mediocre education, with a mediocre career, on a mediocre couch, watching a mediocre sitcom.

And so instead of independent thought, creativity, innovation, and excellence they are taught…as were kids 160 years ago…conformity, compliance, and obedience.

The second tragic loss is the fact that school measures CONFORMANCE not INTELLIGENCE. Having a 4.0 means you’re a great student, not necessarily a smart person. But very few, if any, young students know the difference. They assume good grades are the ultimate measure of your intelligence, and consequently what you can achieve in life.

While in reality nearly anybody with a pulse can get into college, this reality never really dawns on the vast majority of average-intelligence people. Holding themselves to outdated 1950’s standards, they actually think just because they were accepted into a college they are now somehow smart. And, therefore, whether they were studying “17th Century French Poetry” or “Transgendered Mozambique Turtle Studies” they deem themselves just as smart as you with your nuclear engineering degree.

I cannot tell you the number of couples I know where the wife has some fluffy bunnies MASTERS degree in education or communications while the husband has an average, ole boring BACHELORS degree in chemistry or petroleum engineering, BUT the wife still lords the fact she has an “advanced degree” over her husband insisting she’s somehow intellectually superior.

This is but a microcosm of what you can expect to tolerate while you’re in school (and out) as millions of genuine idiots who with a mere pulse managed to get a frivolous degree in some form of poppycock think they are intellectual equals to those who are genuinely intelligent. The woman with her “Masters in Philosophy” degree who can’t shut up about it at a party while you clandestinely excuse yourself to the bathroom to avoid her averageness. The MBA braggart whose sole accomplishment is that he merely has his MBA yet no form of gainful employment. And the law graduate? The same, but with perhaps $50,000 more in student loan debt.

Just because you escaped school does not mean you’ve escaped Idiocracy. Yes, school was an artificial environment you effectively spent your entire life under. And yes, school was inherently flawed in its design, execution, and staffing. But just because you’re entering the real world does not mean people suddenly get their act together, let alone magically increase their intelligence. It’s the exact same people you’ve always been with, now moving from college into the working world. In other words, Idiocracy is inescapable for abnormally intelligent people and it will, in one way or another, follow you to your grave. And the working world is no different.

To be blunt, today’s American employers know they have you by the balls. You not only likely have student loans, but if you’re like most Americans probably a car loan, some credit card bills, children, and a mortgage meaning you need your employer more than your employer needs you. And an unfortunate fact of life is that most people, when given power over others, become sadists and abuse it. So it’s not merely “deliver A-level work” and “show up everyday,” but a sick and twisted Twilight Zone of Unpaid overtime, Playing the “Read Your Boss’ Mind” Game “I don’t have time to train you” “It’s a steep learning curve” “You’re not a team player” “Personality adjustments” Never ending CPE “Kiss the Ring” Pointless meetings

Normal and dumb people value feeling good over actual, genuine progress.

First, they cannot keep up the charade or façade of emotional interest. It just isn’t in their nature and it’s simply too taxing mentally. High IQ people can plainly see a problem for what it is, what logical decisions need to be made in order to solve it, and can remove any emotional or psychological preferences they might have about it. They offer direct, blunt, emotionless solutions that are guaranteed to solve the problem, but unfortunately step on people’s precious little toes.

In order to understand why nearly every abnormally intelligent person rams head with management you need to understand how one advances in business, employment, and careers. Conformance, not performance. Compliance, not excellence. Ass kissing, not ass kicking.

most businesses (or any large organization) is a handful of people up top developing the overall strategic plan and disseminating that plan down through their lieutenants and mid-managers to the employees or ground troops below. In order for this plan to work everybody has to do their part, and in theory the overall executive strategy will be a success. But notice where the emphasis is put in this type of employment structure. Your value as an employee is not how intelligent you are, or if you “think outside the box,” or if you come up with a revolutionary way to streamline a process. It’s simply whether you’re compliant and do your job. And not just do your job, but do it the way you were told AND preferably without asking too many questions. In other words, obedient, compliant, COMPLETELY AVERAGE people, especially those with ass-kissing “great people skills,” thrive in this environment and are the ones who get promoted and become bosses.

it is NOT the smartest or best people who get promoted, but rather the most average.

True leadership, true and genuine leading requires intelligence, an independent mind, the ability to delay gratification, the ability to think long term, and above all else a spine. For example a true visionary would look at today’s technology and ask a question I’ve been asking myself for about five years… Why do we commute anymore?

the reason the entire country is forced to endure a daily commute on traffic-jammed roads is because instead of real leaders we have millions of compliant, obedient, and incredibly average bosses who are not intelligent enough to get past the third grade quandary of “Well, if I can’t see you then how do I know you’re working?”

If incompetence and insecurity wasn’t enough to deal with, enter in good ole fashioned sadism. Because as stated before, when you give people power over others, unfortunately most of them become sadists. And it is a guarantee you will run into these inferior, worthless pieces of human scum who through deceit, lies, manipulation, or just dumb luck will manage to become your boss.

And if you think it’s difficult dealing with an incompetent boss, afraid you might “steal his job,” just wait till you deal with the sociopaths out there who purposely enjoy torturing their employees. But if you really want to incur the wrath of sociopathic bosses, if you really want to set them off and see just what kind of hell they’re capable of, you just have to do one simple thing. Be smarter than them. And heaven help you if you are.

the only form of employment for abnormally intelligent people is self-employment or entrepreneurship.

When you consider the mental pain and suffering you’ll endure as a smart person in today’s corporate America, not to mention how it is nearly impossible to achieve anything near your potential when working for someone else, entrepreneurship (whether you want to become one or not) is pretty much the only choice.

Finally, the most common complaint I hear from my female clients under 40 is the lack of real, masculine men. While pursuing the ideal of equal treatment of the sexes, various faux-intellectuals and hacks posing as “social scientists” have pushed beyond equal treatment under the law and now demand equal outcomes and equal…well…everything. Anything men can do, women can do. Applauding Bruce/Catlyn Jenner more than young girls majoring in engineering. Besmirching women for daring to want to be wives and moms.

“Gender is a social construct.” Replacing “he” and “she” with “zhe” and “zhr.” As well as the complete elimination of gender entirely.

This perilously ignores the terabytes of empirical data (not to mention fact) that men and women are different and that these differences cannot be erased no matter how hard you try. It also ignores the obvious point that these differences exist for ...

I find it very cute and adorable “social scientists” of the past 50 years think they know more than what nature has figured out over the past 2 million.

Still, the academic and political classes of society thought it best to trifle with these realities, blurring the lines of gender, which has ultimately resulted in pansified, emasculated men that no woman wants. Yes, television says women want “sensitive 90’s men.” Yes, academia says men need to get in touch with their “emotions and inner-selves.” And yes, even women say they want that bearded hipster with his red skinny jeans who writes poetry, works at the coffee shop, lives at home, and can’t afford a car. But it’s almost as cute as “social scientists” thinking they know more than nature.